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Road Rage Suspect Faced Previous Lawsuit

Ernest Stickell, who was arrested after a road rage incident on the Beltway Wednesday, was a familiar face to a lawyer who had faced him over charges of racist acts in the workplace. (Published Thursday, July 20, 2017)

A man who was arrested after a road rage incident on the Beltway Wednesday has faced allegations of abusive behavior in the past.

Ernest Stickell, 58, of Mechanicsville, Maryland, was arrested Wednesday after police say he opened fire on another driver in Alexandria, Virginia. That driver, a 33-year-old woman from Bladensburg, Maryland, was shot in the neck and back.

"[She] parked the car, and she got out and was screaming profanity, in [a] loud voice, then a gentleman in the passenger side jumped out, and they were both going toward the white vehicle," she continued.

The woman and the man, who News4 learned is the driver's boyfriend, threatened the van driver and challenged him to get out of his car, the witness said.

When attorney Vickie Fang heard Stickell had been arrested, she was reminded of a client she represented in 2001. That client had filed a racial harassment suit against Stickell, who was his supervisor at an auto glass company.

Her client alleged that Stickell used racial slurs against him and against customers -- and even against Stickell's own African-American wife.

"In one particularly egregious episode, Stickell placed a picture of a monkey between the pages of a parts manual ... that Spriggs regularly used," court filings say. "Stickell had captioned the picture with X's and O's, along with the notation 'so you'll never forget who you are.'"

“That kind of anger and hostility, I think we call it bullying now," said Fang. "I just thought of him as a sadist, that he would be making the news -- I didn’t think he’d be making it in a good way.”

On Tuesday, a moped driver stabbed another man following a road rage incident in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Police say the victim got into an argument with the moped driver while waiting to turn left on State Route 3. The victim suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

One high-profile road rage incident on a Southern California freeway, between a motorcyclist and a driver, was caught on camera. The resulting crash sent an innocent person to a hospital on June 21, authorities said.

In Northern Virginia, a driver got out of his car and beat 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen to death with a baseball bat, according to police. Hassanen was returning to an all-night prayer session during Ramadan.

Another road rage incident occurred in Philadelphia on June 28. Officials say 28-year-old David Andrew Desper killed 18-year-old Bianca Roberson after she merged lanes at the same time as the suspect.